<<Print>>

The Auditor-General, Mr Daniel Domelevo, has said decentralising Ghana’s payroll system was key in ensuring total eradication of ghost names on government payroll in Ghana and Africa as a whole.

He pointed out that the closer the payroll system was to the people, the easier it was to detect and eliminate ghost names. "We will soon make a recommendation to the government to move the payroll system closer to the people."

He said though government employed about 600,000 people out of the about 29 million Ghanaians, 45 per cent of government revenue was used to pay salaries of workers, thereby placing a huge deficit on infrastructure and other developmental goals.

Mr Domelevo, who said this during the briefing of heads of institutions and the media in Takoradi on the exercise to verify details of government employees, noted that seeing Ghana beyond aid and ensuring massive development required that those in the helm of affairs did the right thing.

He regretted that young graduates who were ready to work remained unemployed while the old, who were on government payroll, were not working, adding that "we can't sit aloof and allow wastage in government payroll".

The Auditor-General pointed out that the exercise was not to witch-hunt anyone or unnecessarily remove names of workers from the government payroll, but to clean the names of those who were not supposed to be on the government payroll.

He said winning the fight against ghost names would, therefore, require that heads of management units at the regional and district levels were empowered by central administration to quickly eliminate names of those on separation or those who had died, which continued to eat a chunk of the government’s cake.

The two-week exercise in the region would run simultaneously in all the selected centres in the 23 districts, with more than 41,000 government staff expected to undergo the exercise.

In the Sekondi/Takoradi Metropolitan Assembly, 11,000 workers are expected to verify their status at the Regional Co-ordinating Council, the Teachers Resource centre, Effia-Nkwanta and Takoradi hospitals, prisons and the Sekondi School for the Deaf (SEKDEAF).

“We need to change; we cannot afford the wastage of state funds, which could be channelled into development, as well as employing new staff to control unemployment.”